Slowly falling apart

This sky is falling

After such a triumph with A Thousand Clouds of Peace (Mil Nubes de Paz Cercan el Cielo, cross-reference, below) the second installment in Julián Hernández’s apparent “Cielo” series is a sluggish disappointment.  In the former, Gerardo’s (Juan Carlos Ortuño) struggles through lust, love and leaving won hearts and minds from opening frame to the credits.  In 2006 another Gerardo (Miguel Ángel Hoppe) fills the screen with an alluring physique but merely drags rather than pulls his audience into the trials and predicaments of his ever-fluctuating personal world.

It’s a world where his college chum Jonás (Fernando Arroyo—cool, hot and petulant as required) beds then banishes his roommate as the fire in their loins first flickers from lack of fuel then is snuffed out by the winds of change and conquests to come.

Couple-stalker Sergio (Alejandro Rojo) seizes the moment and oh-so-metaphorically reveals his passion to a resigned but forever horny Gerardo.

Little dialogue gets in the way of  Alejandro Cantú’s sympathetic lens.  With unabashed honesty, the bodies are laid bare, loved, washed and abandoned but at a pace that never leaves first gear.

The music track from Arturo Villela Vega and Juan Carlos Gonzáles helps relieve the oppressive monotony, yet even the solo harpsichord interventions lose their novelty and drift off to become tiresome and predictable.

Enough said.  Here’s to episode three and a return to the first-rate result of which Hernández is most certainly capable.  We await in eager anticipation.

Director/Writer	Julián Hernández
Cinematographer	Alejandro Cantú
Music	Arturo Villela Vega, Juan Carlos Gonzáles
Editor	Arenales Osorio
Cast	Miguel Ángel Hoppe, Fernando Arroyo, Alejandro Rojo, Clarisa Rendón, Ignacio Peredo, Klaudia Aragón, Pilar Ruiz

Cross-reference:  A Thousand Clouds of Peace